


all i want for you to do is take my body home

by xylodemon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Bottom Dean, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demon Dean, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:26:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1815229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved - Jeremiah 8:20</p><p>Or: the one where Cas makes a deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all i want for you to do is take my body home

**Author's Note:**

> This is angsty and ambiguous. Spoilery content notes at the end.

Dean wakes to Crowley's voice in his ear and the dark tang of sulfur flooding his nose. Pain flares in his arm, searing sudden and sharp from his wrist to his shoulder; when he first opens his eyes he sees everything in muted shades of gray, sharp and shadowy at once, but then a switch flips somewhere inside his head and the world slowly bleeds into color.

"You back with us, Squirrel?" Crowley asks, his voice low, strangely cautious, and Dean shivers with something that isn't quite anger, isn't quite fear. He remembers Metatron stabbing him, and the tight look on Sam's face as Sam had dragged him to the car. His chest still aches, but the sensation is so dull and detached it could be happening to someone else.

"I died."

Crowley hums in agreement. "You did."

Dean tightens his grip on the First Blade. His vision burns gray again. The inside of his mouth tastes like smoke and ash.

 

+

 

"I'm not coming back," Dean says, slouching against the wall as he tries to catch his breath. His jeans are shoved down around his knees. He has come on his hands and sweat at the dip of his throat, and his jaw aches from having Cas' dick in his mouth.

They're in a motel just over the Iowa line in Livingston; Dean hasn't asked about Sam and Cas hasn't offered.

Silence: Cas shifts at Dean's side, his hair scratching against the wallpaper as he turns his head, his feet rasping over the carpet as he straightens his legs. His shirt is hanging open, crookedly, framing the place where his neck curves into his shoulder, the skin bruising red from Dean's lips and teeth. He curls his hand over Dean's bent knee, leans in enough to nose at the place behind Dean's ear.

"There's no fixing this, Cas. Not this time."

"I know."

"You gotta let me go."

"I know," Cas says again, but he slides sideways after another beat of silence, crawling into Dean's lap, and he's hard again, jumped up on whatever's left of his grace, his dick pushing sticky and wet against Dean's thigh. He kisses the hinge of Dean's jaw, then drags his mouth down the side of Dean's neck, all stubble and heat, and Dean bites his lip until he tastes blood, reminds himself this is supposed to be goodbye.

 

+

 

Hell is a wasteland.

There is no sky, not really, just a vague sense of something waiting up above, something sinister and dark, curled up at the edges like burnt paper, reaching for the bloody horizon with shadows sharpened into fingers and claws. Beneath that the buildings are derelict, blackened stone hulked into rubble and crumbling in on itself, and the ground is scorched and ragged and raw, trampled by feet and ravaged by fire, cracking open around rumbling pits and tall pillars of acrid smoke. Dean's footsteps feel loud, rock and bone crunching under the soles of his boots. An earthquake rattles and groans in the distance; Dean braces himself against the sagging corpse of a fence, barbed wire cutting into his hand as he waits for the shaking to pass.

He remembers the time he spent on the rack, and the time he spent off it, the straps and needles and knives, the way he'd shivered in spite of the ferocious heat, the coaxing lilt of Alistair's voice, the screams of the souls he broke. 

He also remembers the day the angels came -- how they'd looked like lightning come to life, how they'd burned hotter than any fire, how one of them had lifted the husk of his soul and tucked it into the curve of its wing, how it had spoke to him in a voice like a shrieking wind, told him not to be afraid.

 

+

 

Cas finds him a few miles outside of Tulsa. They end up fucking in the back of Dean's stolen car, Dean bracing his foot against the side panel for better leverage, clawing at the seats until the sun-rotted leather splits under his fingers, Cas digging his nails into Dean's side as he rolls his hips, his mouth open and wet as he pants into the hollow of Dean's throat. Having Cas inside him is different now, somehow better and worse at exactly the same time; he's divorced from his meatsuit in a way that makes everything muted and indistinct, unless he focuses on _feeling_ , and then it's nearly too much, rippling through every single part of him, laying him open and nudging into every hidden, dusty corner. When he finally comes it hits him like a gunshot, almost jolts him into smoking out except for the binding link on his arm.

They lie there in silence afterward, listening to the rain batter the roof of the car and the big rigs rumble down the overpass behind them, Cas mouthing softly at Dean's neck and jaw, Dean measuring the unsteady thrum of Cas' newly-human heart. 

"How long?" Dean asks eventually. He knows he should've asked when he noticed that Cas' true face had disappeared, but the longer he spends downstairs the more _should've_ and _could've_ seem abstract and pointless. 

"Two weeks." Cas tucks his hand under Dean's shirt and skims it up Dean's chest, thumbing at Dean's nipple until a noise catches in the back of Dean's throat. "I felt ill for a few days, and then it burned out of me all at once, like I'd been stabbed with an angel blade."

"You died?"

"Briefly. Hannah leads the host now, and she -- she believed they owed me a favor, for abandoning me against Metatron, so she gave me a choice."

Dean sits up a little, pushing Cas away from his chest by the shoulder. He looks tired, the skin under his eyes the color of an old bruise. "And _this_ is what you chose? Living on the road with my brother? Hunting out of shit motels and -- "

"Yes."

"Why?"

Cas sits up on his knees, frowning slightly as his dick slips out of Dean's body. Dean finds himself trying to hold Cas' come in out of muscle-memory, even though he could clean himself up with a thought; Cas dips his hand between Dean's legs, rubs his thumb over Dean's hole. "Because I preferred it to the alternative."

"To what? Being an angel?"

"To remaining in heaven and never seeing you again."

The old Dean would've argued with that, but the new Dean is wholly selfish creature, and Cas is sliding down his body, pressing soft-wet kisses to his chest and belly. He noses at the base of Dean's dick, then at the space behind his balls, then lower, his tongue hot and wet as he curls it against Dean's hole, cleaning up the mess he made.

 

+

 

Dean hunts when he's topside. 

He tracks demons by their stench, yanking them out of their soft, trembling meatsuits the way Sam had back during his Ruby days, twisting his hand in the air between them, watching as they beg and sputter and puff ash, as black smoke pours out of them like a filthy waterfall. He's probably strong enough to kill them, to squeeze them into a flare of sulfur and a flash of sickly light, destroy them the way Sam had destroyed Alistair, but he knows now that hell is the bigger punishment, that death is a release none of them deserve.

He saves the First Blade for living things – vampires, werewolves, ghouls, wraiths. Blood pours over his hands and spills between his fingers and the Mark burns on his arm like a brand, beats underneath his skin like a drum.

 

+

 

"I want to make a deal."

Cas is shirtless, his jeans open and a trail of purplish hickeys following the sharp sweep of his collarbone. Dean licks his lips and cocks his head to the side; the old him would be horrified, but the thing he is now just smiles like a knife. "Tired of the daily grind?"

"I thought it would be enough, seeing you when I could, but it isn't. I want to be with you, wherever that is."

"Even if that means going to hell?"

"Yes." Cas grabs his shirt from the foot of the bed, shakes it out like he's going to put it on, then drops it. "Even that."

Dean hooks his foot behind Cas' ankle, toppling them both to the bed, then crawls between Cas' legs, rubbing his thigh against Cas' dick until Cas is half-hard and clawing at the sheets. "What makes you think I'll still give a shit in ten years?"

"Ten years is customary, but not required," Cas says, biting at the skin under Dean's chin. "You know that as well as I do."

"What makes you think I give a shit now?"

Silently, Cas slides his hand up to Dean's left shoulder. Dean has been a Knight of Hell for six months and Cas has been human for four, but the place where Cas' handprint used to be throbs under Cas' palm, aches like a phantom limb. Something slow and warm tries twisting into Dean's chest; it gets drowned in anger and ash before it has a chance to bloom, but Dean feels it for the few seconds it lives, remembers it.

"What about Sam?"

"Your brother never wanted this life; he only hunts with me out a sense of duty to you. If I left, I believe he would do something that truly makes him happy."

"All right." Dean sits up, pulling Cas with him by curling his hand at the back of Cas' neck. "What are you trading for?"

"For you to still give a shit in ten years."

Dean laughs and runs his tongue over the soft swell of Cas' lower lip.

 

+

 

He meets the hellhounds at the gate.

Cas' soul is too clean and bright for all the sulfur and smoke; it shimmers through the haze like silver, like sunlight, and Dean thinks, strangely, of lights flickering in the shadows of an abandoned barn.

He tucks Cas close against his side, tells him not to be afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Cas makes a demon deal so he and Dean can be together in hell; mileage may vary on whether that constitutes character death.


End file.
